BEIS Respond To Net Zero Petition
By Paul Homewood
There has been demand building for a referendum on Net Zero. A petition was organised a few weeks ago, but because of virtually no publicity, it has only collected 19000 signatures.
(You can sign up here)
As it got above 10000 signatures, the government had to issue a response:
National referendums are a mechanism to endorse major constitutional change; debates about national policy are best determined through Parliamentary democracy and the holding of elections.
The government made a key manifesto commitment to reach “Net Zero by 2050 with investment in clean energy solutions and green infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions and pollution”. It was one of the top six pledges in the government’s manifesto, alongside policy commitments to help achieve the target. The net zero target was passed into law by Parliament with strong cross-Party support.
It is clear that public concern about climate change is high, having doubled since 2016, with 80% of people in the UK either concerned or very concerned (BEIS Public Attitudes Tracker Wave 37, 2021). We also know that people and businesses recognise that change must happen – 80% of respondents in a recent survey believe the way we live our lives will need to change to address climate change (BEIS, Climate change and net zero: public awareness and perceptions, 2021). In the same survey, after being provided with information on net zero, 78% of all participants said they strongly or somewhat supported the net zero target.
Moving away from fossil fuels and towards net zero gives us the unprecedented opportunity to:
– Create and secure thousands of well-paid, quality jobs across the UK, helping to level up the country. Tackling net zero will create thousands long-term jobs in our reindustrialised heartlands.
– Build a more secure, home-grown energy sector based on nuclear, wind, hydrogen and solar that is not reliant on imported fossil fuels, providing consumers with affordable, reliable energy for warmer homes and workplaces.
– Reduce harmful pollution which contaminates our air and our natural environment to improve our health and wellbeing, as well as that of future generations.
– Attract investment into UK businesses and industry, revitalising our industrial heartlands while driving down the costs of key technologies – from electric vehicles to heat pumps – to reduce bills and give the UK a competitive edge. Since the launch of the Prime Minister’s Ten Point Plan we have secured £5.8bn in green foreign investment.
Recent volatile international gas prices have demonstrated that we need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. We need to protect consumers and businesses from global gas prices by increasing our domestic energy security through clean power that is generated in the UK for the people of the UK.
Taking action on climate is also crucial to strengthening the UK’s place in the global economy as we Build Back Better from the pandemic. The whole world is trying to capitalise on the benefits of going greener, investing in innovative new technology, building new industries, and creating quality jobs in sustainable sectors.
Our transition to net zero we will be tech-led using the best of British technology and innovation – just as we did in the last industrial revolution – to help make homes and buildings warmer, the air cleaner and our journeys greener, all while creating thousands of jobs in new future-proof industries.
Transitioning to net zero is not about telling people what to do or stopping people doing things; it’s about giving them the support they need to do the same things they do now but in a more sustainable way.
We must seize the moment to get a head start on this worldwide green industrial revolution and ensure UK industries, workers and the wider public benefit. Taking action now will put us at the forefront of large, expanding global markets and allow us to capitalise on export opportunities in low carbon technologies and services.
Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/599602
The nonsense they have written actually proves just why a referendum is needed!
“National referendums are a mechanism to endorse major constitutional change; debates about national policy are best determined through Parliamentary democracy and the holding of elections.
The government made a key manifesto commitment to reach “Net Zero by 2050 with investment in clean energy solutions and green infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions and pollution”. It was one of the top six pledges in the government’s manifesto, alongside policy commitments to help achieve the target. The net zero target was passed into law by Parliament with strong cross-Party support.”
There is no law that I am aware of that says referendums should only be used for constitutional change. Coincidentally, only yesterday Michael Gove announced that local referendums would be held on planning issues.
As for elections, the electorate has never been given the chance to make a decision, as all the major parties have the same Net Zero policy. Indeed, the Net Zero Act, as well as the 2008 Climate Change Act, were never even included in any party’s manifesto beforehand, and therefore lack any democratic accountability at all.
“It is clear that public concern about climate change is high, having doubled since 2016, with 80% of people in the UK either concerned or very concerned”
Since when were opinion polls a substitute for democracy?
In any event, polls also consistently show that the majority of people are not prepared to pay the cost of Net Zero.
“Moving away from fossil fuels and towards net zero gives us the unprecedented opportunity to:
– Create and secure thousands of well-paid, quality jobs across the UK, helping to level up the country. Tackling net zero will create thousands long-term jobs in our reindustrialised heartlands.”
Experience shows that governments cannot “create green jobs”, and that many more jobs end up being lost as a result.
All of what the government is claiming is in any event highly speculative. But what we do know for sure is that many jobs, maybe hundreds of thousands, will be lost directly as a result of Net Zero.
“- Build a more secure, home-grown energy sector based on nuclear, wind, hydrogen and solar that is not reliant on imported fossil fuels, providing consumers with affordable, reliable energy for warmer homes and workplaces”
Renewable energy certainly is neither affordable or reliable. As for home-grown, solar panels are largely made in China, as are the batteries and rare earths needed for electric cars and renewable energy.
Furthermore the only source of bulk hydrogen available in the foreseeable future is steam reforming. This requires massive amounts of natural gas, far more than would be needed if we used the gas itself instead of hydrogen. We would, in other words, be even more dependent on imported fossil fuels than we are now.
Finally heat pumps certainly won’t provide the “warmer homes” promised. In fact the reverse is true.
“- Reduce harmful pollution which contaminates our air and our natural environment to improve our health and wellbeing, as well as that of future generations”
Air quality in the UK has improved dramatically in recent decades, and continues to improve year by year.
“- Attract investment into UK businesses and industry, revitalising our industrial heartlands while driving down the costs of key technologies – from electric vehicles to heat pumps – to reduce bills and give the UK a competitive edge. Since the launch of the Prime Minister’s Ten Point Plan we have secured £5.8bn in green foreign investment.”
Electric cars, heat pumps, hydrogen and renewable energy will increase bills, not reduce them. As a result, UK industry will be at a massive competitive disadvantage.
The BEIS talks as if foreign investors were doing us a favour. They are not; they will expect a nice fat return on that £5.8bn, subsidised by bill payers and taxpayers.
“Recent volatile international gas prices have demonstrated that we need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. We need to protect consumers and businesses from global gas prices by increasing our domestic energy security through clean power that is generated in the UK for the people of the UK.”
Volatile gas prices, and ultimately supplies, reinforce the need for increasing domestic gas production, both from the North Sea and fracking. They also highlight the huge mistake in shutting down coal power, which should be giving us an alternative.
Even official scenarios confirm that we will still require gas and oil for many years to come, as wind and solar power are too intermittent to rely on.
Transferring dependence on imported fossil fuels to dependence on China for rare earths is foolish in the extreme.
“Taking action on climate is also crucial to strengthening the UK’s place in the global economy as we Build Back Better from the pandemic. The whole world is trying to capitalise on the benefits of going greener, investing in innovative new technology, building new industries, and creating quality jobs in sustainable sectors.”
No, the whole world is not interested in going green, as COP26 made absolutely clear, largely because there are no “benefits”.
“Our transition to net zero we will be tech-led using the best of British technology and innovation – just as we did in the last industrial revolution – to help make homes and buildings warmer, the air cleaner and our journeys greener, all while creating thousands of jobs in new future-proof industries.”
The last industrial revolution was technology led and consumer driven, not the product of government diktat.
Net Zero will lead to higher bills, colder homes and the loss of thousands of jobs.
“Transitioning to net zero is not about telling people what to do or stopping people doing things; it’s about giving them the support they need to do the same things they do now but in a more sustainable way.”
Not about telling people what to do? But that is precisely what it is about. Banning the only cars that most people want, banning gas boilers and telling people they should fly less, eat less meat and use public transport.
Notably there is not a single mention of how much this will all cost us, the elephant in the room.
Apart from the red herring thrown in at the start about referendums, the whole response boils down to the belief that politicians know better than the rest of us, and that these matters are far too important to be left to us to have any say.
But that, of course, is precisely why the public should be given the ultimate decision.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Thanks Paul ! You are so right! The truly shameful fact is that (I believe) May’s last Bill went through Parliament unchallenged! Am I right about that?
“Moving away from fossil fuels and towards net zero gives us the unprecedented opportunity to: – Create and secure thousands of well-paid, quality jobs across the UK, helping to level up the country. Tackling net zero will create thousands long-term jobs in our reindustrialised heartlands.”
Nobody can move anything significant anywhere without those renewable biofuels that are 90% fossil fuel. Net-zero requires the removal of any CO2 that is added to balance and maintain carbon “neutrality”. Last year that was ~40 billion tons globally. To remove that, all eight billion people on the planet would have to store about five tons each. This whole climate change scam is slowly being exposed as shortages and higher prices for biofuels in transportation increase.
The BEIS does not have its head in the sand – it is buried in concrete, totally unavailable!
Carefully ignoring natural sources of CO2, activists tell us UK is responsible for 1% of global carbon emissions but the climate scare is actually based on carbon dioxide, a trace gas vital to life on Earth.
Because it doesn’t fit the narrative, what is never mentioned is that natural emissions provide 96% of CO2 and mankind just 4%. 26% of that 4% comes from China and 16% from the USA whilst tiny UK releases 1%. 1% of 4% is 4 parts in 10,000! To prevent this, politicians are prepared to destroy our economy, restrict our freedoms, ration our energy, limit our travel, tell us what we can eat etc. etc.
The claim by politicians that they are able to control the weather if we submit to their plans is beyond barking. Their ignorance will do more harm to UK than any terrorist group, ever.
So for the UK, we have:
0.04% is the total atmospheric CO2
3% is man’s contribution of that
1% is the UK’s contribution of man’s contribution
That totals: 0.000012%
Can Boris really believe that 0.000012% is going to ‘destroy the UK’ such hat we need to destroy the economy and peoples lives to save it????
Talk about being completely nuts!
Which is 1% of the 4% which is itself 4% of the 0.04% which is the actual atmospheric concentration.
I repeat my analogy: if the atmosphere were a 100-metre high silo with the gases layered in it, the bottom 78 metres would be nitrogen. CO2 would take up about 4 centimetres; mankind’s contribution to the increase over the last century or so is about 1.25 millimetres!
I don’t think nature knows we are here — or cares!
I have alrreadty written to my MP about the refusal of the government to support the de-mothballing of two CCGT power plants that would provide back up and downwards pressure on wholesale electricity prices (DT Business today) and attributed it to the insanity of a government led by our insane Prima Minister and his insane fantasies of net zero. What else can I do?i
Wait for the next power cuts. With France expected to be short of electricity until spring it looks like National Grid have overestimated supply in cold, windless conditions.
Vernon – there’s going to be more to this than meets the eye.
My view is that this proposal doesn’t address a fundamental issue of lack of energy. We have plenty of power stations and interconnectors to provide capacity. This is a proposal to add more capacity. But it’s juice we really need in GB right now, not more metal.
If what I read in the press is correct, the government has a fair point that bespoke support destroys the capacity market. There’s no way the government could go there, IMO.
And if what I read in the press is correct, the government responded that the owner shouldn’t need support if the spark spreads (margin on gas fired production) are wide enough to fund capacity. They certainly are this winter! So I saw that as fair point.
If we go with the view that spark spreads should be enough to do the trick, the owner of these power stations is likely to face a mountain to climb in getting itself ready to trade. With the risks and prices of forward contracts where they are today, the owner would probably struggle to find trading counterparties.
I see that last point as one of the major threats to the industry right now. In 2008, the LIBOR market collapsed when nobody had the credit standing to be able to enter into trades. At today’s sky-high power and gas prices, a very large credit facility will not equate to very much product volume. Credit rating is the hidden oil that greases the wheels of the market, and I suspect there will be “friction”.
I hate it when anybody (not just government) quotes “interconnectors” or “hydrogen” as SOLUTIONS for a lack of power. These things are CARRIERS of power, and there has to be a generator (using fossil or nuclear fuel) at one end to get power out at the other. Please, this is a site for people who THINK about the problems – so lets get the terms right!
OK – I’ve been reminded – there ARE other power sources, but not particularly reliable ones!
Hello Russ. I chose my words carefully and used the word “capacity”. Capacity is common language for maximum power (MW) and not energy (MWh). I was THINKING about the problem, and that’s why I said: “But it’s juice we really need in GB right now, not more metal.”
Regarding carriers of power, an interconnector can be considered a source of power to the recipient. I’m pretty confident NG will be taking that approach in their assessment of GB supply margin. I accept there are valid objections to this, but I also recognise it cannot be easily dismissed as incorrect. Like other sources of capacity (MW), (absent breakdowns), we should be able to get energy (MWh) if the price is right – power stations and interconnectors are much the same in that respect.
“What else can I do?” Help to deliberately crash the GB grid. Yes it is an extremely drastic option but I genuinely believe that grinding the entire system to a shuddering halt will be the only way to focus the minds of enough of the masses required to enforce a change.
Could it be done legally? Yes and I am currently trying to write a novel centred around an attempt to do so by disaffected people. And here’s the real clue, the novel is the explanation of how (and exactly when) to do it.
Typical of the Civil Service – ‘The Blob’. Not a common sense brain cell between any of them and more than happy to virtue signal as their cushy livelihoods won’t be affected in any way by the illiterate garbage they spout.
Until the power cuts arrive.
I also wrote about this at Cliscep: https://cliscep.com/2021/11/30/you-want-a-referendum-on-net-zero-lol/
The BEIS reply is dismissive: that’s why I characterised it as “LOL.” My reaction was similar to Paul’s, but draws out different counters.
Nonsense just doesn’t describe it. It’s absolute bo***cks.
“The nonsense they have written actually proves just why a referendum is needed!”
Well Paul, you are of course totally correct, but do you have any faith that people will ever be faced with a balanced view of the true situation. Most MPs are fully on the Kool-aid.
MPs (of all stripes) have never been so useless in my nearly 80 years – a month ago Andrew Orlowski had an article in the Telegraph –
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2021/10/18/engineer-change-needed-westminster/
We know he is right and for the reasons he gives – sadly it is behind a paywall.
I did appreciate this gem towards the end of the article.
“ Cummings’ belief that the British state isn’t prepared for a major crisis is well grounded, but it’s worse than that – Whitehall is poorly prepared for any kind of future, catastrophic or otherwise. ”
Maybe we are just going to have to bite the bullet and learn the hard way but this gem from Orlowski suggests the lesson could be more than a little painful
“ Then, in no particular order, the pupil may learn that it has the smallest ignition energy and the lowest auto-ignition temperature of any fuel. But good luck persuading Whitehall’s brightest minds today what a GSCE physics student knows: a hydrogen strategy is not a great idea.”
Not to mention that the technology at its current stage demands gas to create the hydrogen in a process which emits CO2. So we take a highly efficient, relatively cheap (in normal circumstances), relatively safe, well-understood, readily available fuel and use it to create a fuel which does not exist in the form we intend to use it, is dangerous, not especially efficient, inevitably is more expensive (and a 10-year-old with a reasonable grasp of mathematics could explain why) and has no material effect on CO2 emissions which simply occur during its manufacture rather than during its combustion.
On what planet does that make any sense at all?
Here you go T Walker. You’re welcome.
A hard rain didn’t fall, in the end. When Dominic Cummings left government almost a year ago, civil servants and advisers could again breathe freely. But two radical ideas for better government and public administration vanished with him, and their absence was keenly felt when Westminster gave its verdict on the UK’s coronavirus response last week.
Cummings had lamented the lack of scientific and technical nous in Whitehall and the inclination towards “groupthink”, meaning poor quality decisions arrived at by consensus.
His solution to what he derided as “Oxbridge English graduates who chat about Lacan at dinner parties with TV producers” was to hire more maths-savvy misfits, and his answer to groupthink was an organisational process: a kind of formalised trolling run by what are known as Red Teams.
This concept originated in the US military, where a red team subjects a strategy or plan to rigorous analysis. The proposition is that the good ideas survive the grilling, but poor ones held together by a group consensus don’t.
The Commons health select committee, no doubt informed by Cummings’ many hours of oral testimony, has concluded that “a degree of groupthink … was present” which contributed to major mistakes. That left the other shoe to drop – which was how much Government had relied on bluffers without any real scientific expertise.
Later that evening I watched the former Tory minister Rory Stewart grapple with this same question. He noted how the advice of the physical scientists was apparently trumped by advice from messaging and mass communication consultants, the so-called “behavioural scientists”.
Soothsaying the public was really the politician’s job, Stewart said, while ministers should “ensure the scientists were giving advice on the things they were genuinely expert.”
That’s close to saying the unsayable: that not all sciences are equal, and that behavioural science might not even be a real science at all.
We now know from committee minutes that the advice of the official behavioural scientists on Sage’s SPI-B group was wildly contradictory. SPI-B was concerned that the public would rapidly tire of lockdown, but two hundred more behavioural experts – not on SPI-B – piped up to disagree.
Eventually, the physical scientists concluded that Sars-Cov-2 was indeed like earlier infections such as Sars – you might think the clue’s in the name – and required a more robust response. The behavioural experts then performed a 180 degree turn, and advocated what they’d cautioned against before: fear.
Terrifying adverts were produced to shock us into compliance (“look her in the eyes… and tell her you never bend the rules”). To misquote Groucho Marx: “Those are my scientific principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others”.
Our universities have spent years churning out an army of experts in mass communication and psychology, and being able to bluff has become a passport to advancement in politics, media and administration. Easily seduced by slick professional bluffers, the Cameroon governments fell for psychology particularly hard.
But this field has taken a battering as more and more of the findings that gave behavioural science its newly acquired authority could not be replicated, a story well told in Stuart Ritchie’s book: Science Fictions.
In reality, much of “behavioural science” was really a collection of anecdotes and hunches, given an impressive pseudo-scientific coat of paint. Often these observations are quirky and interesting (and irresistible to some newspaper columnists), but no more than that. As a science, this was a house built on sand. The so-called behavioural experts’ incoherent Covid response must surely be the biggest blow of all.
Wise governments may pay less heed to this mutually reinforcing cadre of pseuds in future. But what of systemic groupthink? Alas, there’s no sign of this diminishing. It took the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s repression and the social credit system to challenge the blithe assumption that increasing prosperity in China would create something more like a liberal open society.
Similarly, the Davos elite’s faith in a “Fourth Industrial Revolution” is founded on advances in pattern recognition translating to huge productivity advances thanks to better robots.
In 2017, I recommended that policy-makers Red Team some of those sunny assumptions on Artificial Intelligence at Westminster. And there are still true believers in self-driving cars, although the number of faithful is dwindling.
Meanwhile, the prejudice against recruiting scientific or engineering talent into Whitehall runs even deeper than groupthink. Smooth communicators with a humanities degree are the default hire. They’re typically hired by smooth communicators with a degree in a humanities subject.
Take the example of energy policy. The first thing a GCSE student learns is that hydrogen doesn’t occur naturally in its gas state anywhere on earth, and so must be manufactured (a big and expensive job). The second is that H is a tiny atom, and therefore very hard to contain.
Then, in no particular order, the pupil may learn that it has the smallest ignition energy and the lowest auto-ignition temperature of any fuel. But good luck persuading Whitehall’s brightest minds today what a GSCE physics student knows: a hydrogen strategy is not a great idea.
Cummings’ belief that the British state isn’t prepared for a major crisis is well grounded, but it’s worse than that – Whitehall is poorly prepared for any kind of future, catastrophic or otherwise.
SW1 really needs those techies and those trolls.
CR: Wow! And, Yep!
I wrote to my MP pre cop26 attaching a GWPF press release concerning a different course of action, ie stop net zero. His reply was pretty much similar to this piece, entirely supporting government policy and dismissing the findings of the GWPF. Where can we go from here? I am seriously worried about blackouts this winter but they want more weather dependent power generation to make us self supporting on energy?? Then they believe we would not have to buy expensive gas from abroad, I despair.
Now ask your MP for the *evidence* for his belief and assertions. I’ve asked mine, more than once, saying to him that if he’s voted on it, he surely must have it, and have read and understood it. So far, nothing! This is the scandal, that our MPs are voting for net-zero from a position of zero-knowledge. They wouldn’t last 5 minutes in business.
And that’s why they’re not in the productive part of the economy. Their position is society is due to people voting for parties; not the numpties that stand for election. When their party wins they take it as a confirmation of their own personal brilliance and the thicker they are the more convinced they are of their own brilliance.
Our constituency is one of those where a monkey wearing a blue rosette would win. Our current MP is a 36 year old ex ‘journalist ‘ with the BBC whose next job was as a SPAD to Dominic Raab. So he knows the square root of bugger all about the real world in which his electorate exists. I have tried on many occasions to provide him with evidence of the Climate and Covid scams and all I get in return is a cut and paste from Central Office of the current narrative.
But the alternatives were a dippy Independent who is still banging the Remoaner drum and a couple of sorry specimens who even make their Labour and Liberal parties look good.
A couple of years back I stood for the District Council as an Independent. When the votes were counted the Conservative came 1st with 400 votes, I was 2nd with 300 and the Liberal 3rd with 200. Those 900 votes represented 22% of the electorate. Apathy rules. 😒
During the Cop26 fiasco, I emailed my MP (Conservative?) and said that as our P.M. seems to have become a member of The Green Party, I will probably find it impossible to vote conservative in the next election. I expected to get some kind of response, but I was just emailed a statement of the government’s plans to deal with the threat of Climate Change.
(Change probably to definitely not vote for him).
John, all the parties that have a chance of winning any constituency are signed up to the same madness, so…
My MP is a head in the sand idiot called Kwasi Kwarteng who heads the BEIS who penned the drivel on the respomse to referendum.I emailed him with the same and gave very detailed readons why NetZero would not work. He got his research assistant to reply telling me not to worry because HMG have got it all well in hand
Keep pressing and ask him to provide the evidence of why he thinks we need net-zero and how the so-called net-zero solutions will keep our society going and safe. Ask for the costings. Remind him that as he voted for this, he must have all this information available, and must have read and understood it, and that his name is ‘on it’ when the crunch day comes. If no satisfactory or no reply, write again, and keep writing.
Well, that certainly puts my mind at ease 😱
FFS. Where to begin with this nonsense. Since when has government policy been shaped by national surveys when scientific evidence is the key?
Have we had a poll on covid? No, of course not, because this particular science suits these muppets they choose to go with that, despite cancelling every dissenting scientist. A trick learned from climate change.
Disgusting fraud. They should all be in jail.
I would like to see a referendum system that copies the Swiss model. In that model, if you get enough signatures the question goes to a referendum. The signatures are formally checked to ensure they are all legal.
The Swiss regularly force their politicos to do, or not do, things entirely against their wishes.
Add to that another feature of the Harrogate Agenda – right of recall to remove MPs.
This is “real”, direct democracy as opposed to the “representative” style we have now. I don’t see our representatives wanting to put us the great unwashed back in charge, because we will frequently tell them to do the opposite to what they want to do.
Did you hear what happened to the “Citizens Committee” on climate change?
They assembled the committee supposedly at random, got them together to be harrangued by alarmist ” climate experts” who gave them their version of “The Science” and then got them to vote on which economically destructive and climatically irrelevant issues they wanted to enact.
I think they used to call such committees “Soviets” in the high old days of the late lamented Bolshevik days where they would get the sheep to rubber stamp whatever their masters had already decided to enact.
I’m sorry but I don’t think a referendum is a good thing at the moment. The Alarmists are bound to win, such is the almost total belief in this nonsense by the bulk the public, and winning would give an even greater authority to the net zero enforcement.
Until the truth of the cost and futility of getting to Net Zero is understood by most people the referendum is a done deal and I’m surprised that the Alarmists are not pushing for it.
I would agree. The public wouldn’t let facts get in the way of a good story, i.e. the story our politicos have brainwashed them with. Even getting the true costs out to the public will be hard enough, as the MSM will only carry the govt’s rhetoric (and we know about the BBC’s hatred of impartiality, despite being under legal obligation to be so)
Suggest an alternative course of action then.
Personally, one thing, I’m plugging away at writing to my MP (on both covid and net-zero), who hopefully has to eventually crack and admit that factual reality is a better bet for his tenure than Boris’ faux pompous rhetoric. That’s something we can all do, and repeatedly so they know we’re not going away. My letters normally lampoon and criticize govt policy and action, identifying the rational alternatives, normally with evidence. I sometimes robustly challenge his beliefs and statements, requesting evidence for them, but also suggest his personal endorsement of them may not be good career move.
Alas I think progress will only come when reality starts to bite. That is – powercuts, blackouts, fuel shortages and energy poverty. When the reality of the suicide of net zero starts to hit then people will start to question – and listen. Our time will come – maybe starting this winter.
We aren’t going to get one, and if we did we’d lose handsomely. After that, we’d have to shut up, just as the remainers did after the Euro referendum.
Nevertheless, as we are shut out of the media for now and only propaganda reaches most of our people, a referendum would have the advantage of exposing more of us to an alternative view.
Agreed, Mike.
I don’t particularly want a referendum either but 100,000 votes would mean they have to debate it, maybe that would help.
A debate in Parliament? 650 MPs with maybe single figures on the sceptic side. That’s not a debate. They are all conditioned.
On the plus side, we would have the names of those who wanted the UK to die and become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the CCP. They will be remembered – with attitude.
Gerry, we are doing the alternative. Drip, Drip Drip. Time will do the rest.
Its almost impossible to actually believe that we being subjected to this economically suicidal government, is Johnson a Putin ‘sleeper’? Worse still is the brainwashing in schools, next our children will be reporting us for being deniers, the cold war is over they said, well it’ll be the freezing war if these policies are followed to net zero or rather zero power! Utter madness. Have I been transported to 1960’s GDR, yesterday the driveshaft failed on my VW, will I get a trabant as at courtesy car?
It would be nice a name or names for this statement so that when it collapses as a policy amid immense economic calamity he/she/they can be held to account. Even some years ahead. Cromwell’s body was dug up.
I have a family member who’s an advisor to Kwarsi at BEIS. He’s very capable and has been successful in business, but is a textbook urban professional, is mad keen on climate action and thinks I’m a complete lost cause to denialism.
I’ll see him at Christmas and find out the inside story…but I expect we all know what it is already!
So folk like Kwarsi only has advisers that tell him what he wants to hear. Got it.
‘Urban professional’ == ‘isolated bubble’.
I suspect if an advisor tells a minister something they don’t want to hear then pretty soon the advisor gets to consider his position.
Ministers will want ideas that chime with their own position plus a route-map of how to enable policy delivery.
You’re definitely right about the bubble though. One of the serious shortcomings is nobody is allowed to challenge woke Green views, so they pass without serious scrutiny.
The Climate Denier label enables people to just dismiss whatever we say. My view remains that the only way to get change is to challenge the politics. The simple fact remains that none of the claimed Net Zero solutions chosen by bureaucrats is likely to work, and the chances of them all working is zero. No sensible person should believe otherwise. So we are embarking on a plan to spend trillions with virtually no chance of success. That is absolutely lunatic.
But Paul, a majority of people apparently believe that face masks work; that lockdowns work; that the jabs are vaccines; that Covid is a plague akin to the Black Death. You spend a goodly proportion of your time debunking the all pervading miasma of misinformation on climate, yet many people still believe the world will shortly fry.
My fear with a referendum on Net Zero with blanket media propaganda in hyperdrive you might get it even more firmly entrenched.
Letter in today’s Telegraph from someone in Cumbria, left without power Friday to Monday, who luckily had a wood burner for heat and a gas hob for food, but all communication gone; had they had a heat pump it wouldn’t have run without electricity, nor would they have had transport to safety if they had had an electric vehicle unable to charge.
Let the madness of going fully electric, coupled with the nascent cooling cycle, kick in and people will be unable to avoid the truth. The thing will die through both economics and simple observation.
We should create a full record of our Govt and MPs failure to heed the warnings and their denials, so it can be produced en-mass at the inevitable time. I can supply several letters from my MP on that score.
” energy sector based on nuclear, ”
1 out of 40. That’s not good.
Explain – please.
Net Zero will mean mass genocide! There is no way windmills and solar panels will supply the electricity needs of the world population. Those who will not get electricity( at least 50 percent of the population) will simply die! Is this the real plan for the eugenicists? Absolutely! Is the UK government a eugenic government?. How many are in the British eugenic society? I would guess many. Terri Jackson (I dont agree with your analysis of radical change in lifestyle. You should have been at the Steve Kookin lecture. It was packed.)
On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 3:00 PM NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT wrote:
> Paul Homewood posted: “By Paul Homewood There has been demand building > for a referendum on Net Zero. A petition was organised a few weeks ago, but > because of virtually no publicity, it has only collected 19000 signatures. > (You can sign up here) As it got above 10” >
“Net Zero will mean mass genocide! There is no way windmills and solar panels will supply the electricity needs of the world population.”
The WORLD isn’t participating. This is a Brit thang. (Germany has recently suggested it will play too.)
I read the opening and nearly threw up with the sickening feeling I had woken from a deep sleep as Winston Smith.
That you, Paul, had the abdominal fortitude to critique it is a mark of a man deserving high honour. But, having read that opening I fear our country will never, ever be the same again.
I thought Sir Humphrey Appleby was dead – but no he’s now working in BEIS.
Total bollocks. I blame his wife amongst others.
That BEIS response could have come from one of the politicos in an Ayn Rand book….frightening that we are so far down the tubes.
I fear that, if/when we start getting power cuts, there will not be any objective or informed analysis of the causes. The cry will go up that we have to get away from fossil fuels even faster – as we saw in the aftermath of Texas.
Just as adaptation is far preferable to (attempted) mitigation wrt climate change, I am nearing a similar conclusion in terms of the political situation. No amount of clear, factual evidence is going to win through. Not only will it be drowned out by the climerati, there is no-one in any position of authority who could understand the issues.
So the question becomes what steps should we all be taking to minimise the risks and consequences of power outages. How tragic.
I sometimes think that the only way is for the Conservative party to topple Boris, get a new PM who is against the ‘green blob’, and watch all the MPs suddenly change their minds. But could they topple him, unless of course it’s proved he’s implicated in the ‘fast tracked PPE suppliers’ misconduct scandal currently going through the courts?
If he/she could be found I somehow doubt they’d get any support. Quite a paradox.
That said, I do agree with you.
About the level of drivel I have come to expect from Quarteng’s BEIS
Further to my comment, Paul you very capably address each and every patronising and misleading argument that Kwarteng and his minions trot out .
We are indeed in Kafka land ^.^
Let us make up our minds is it Kafka, Ayn Rand, George Orwell or Aldous Huxley that have so accurately painted our future under the totalitarian boot – or all four?.
I suppose we could declare ourselves Climate Idiocy Refugees and seek asylum in India.
Or superglue ourselves to wind turbines .
Or start a revolution
Paul, can I send your excellent breakdown of the BEIS reply to my MP or could you produce something else for all of us to send that would perhaps be more effective? Also where else can this petition be placed to help gather the 100,000 needed?
I think the referendum should be to force the Govt to engage in a red-team/blue-team debate, not on net-zero itself, as that way, if it were defeated (by populous apathy) it would not provide ammunition for net-zero. You have to win battle by battle. You can’t win the war in one go.
It’s consensus 2 – Science 0 in injury time I’m afraid, and the referee is pro-consensus too.
With no opposition, as with Brexit, it will need a massive external force to make anything change. Sadly, the referendum was easy for the establishment. Apart from the internet only GB News will publicise the madness that now rules us.
Jack, my feeling is it will end in penalties. I also have a feeling that any sceptic goal-keeper we might play has been knobbled.
Paul, as I try more to digest this incredible piece of nonsense, and notwithstanding your excellent commentary, it has occurred to me that this level of stupidity and nonsense – straight from the Pol Pot school of how to ruin a nation-state – needs sceptic blogs to come together to fight it. As a start, have you shared your analysis with the likes of GWPF and other like-minded blogs? Do we know where the likes of Lawson and Ridley stand and what they think can be done about it?
GWPF is no more, Montford has replaced it with Net Zero Watch and out has gone Nigel Lawson and others will follow. This is now a single issue organisation ^.^
No, the GWPF (Foundation) is still alive and kicking.
The GWPF (Forum), which was set up alongside it as the “political” arm, is now rebadged as Net Zero Watch, but is till run exactly as before.
The reason for the Forum, BTW, was that there were complaints from, I believe Bob Ward and co, that the GWPF was breaking its qualifications as a Charity by posting political opinions, not that Bob Ward’s Grantham Institute ever would!
But whwere is the Foundation website? Do you believe that all the scientists who joined the Foundation agree with Net Zero but in a more gentle way? I am afraid I do not think they would.
The reason the next zero petition only has 19k signatures is open to debate.
The government response is straight out of the “you have got to be kidding me ” policy department.
Unfortunately we have the village idiot in charge so we get a pantomime, oh yes we do!
A very good subject for discussion: What would the world be like today if development and scientific progression was determined by politicians (with their PPEs)?
Some of you have actually had replies from your MP’s . I wrote to mine ( Labour ) on these issues and never even got a reply !!!
Keep writing, asking specific, single-point questions, and for evidence of their beliefs. Then write some more. Remind them they are YOUR REPRESENTATIVE, i.e. it’s their job to represent you. My normal approach is along the line “how can you stand by and let Boris/Govt act in such a blatantly unevidenced, ie idiotic & economically/humanly damaging way?”.
This is a battle already lost.
My MP (Cons.) never bothers to respond, but I like to remind him that, when it is impossible for our supposedly reputable “Representatives” to have a grown up and informed debate, then he shouldn’t be surprised if all us plebs start to listen to disreputable people.
One obvious example has been the 30 year long (and still continuing) activities of muslim child rape gangs. And it is largely credit to the extremely disreputable Nick Griffin, that eventually the Jay report was commissioned. The whitewashing still continues, however.
When the man on the Clapham Omnibus realises what has been going on with the GangGreen cults and their crony capitalist venal Ruinable promoters, I think things may get quite exciting. Although, don’t expect senior police officers to be suggesting that the fuzz will do their very best to ensure your comfort.
As Mark Steyn likes to point out, for a long time there was concern that there might be a civil war. Now he worries that there won’t be a civil war.
I totally agree.
#METOO
After watching Prime Minister’s Question time yesterday you can only wonder. I wrote straight after the event, to my MP, Fiona Bruce, and asked why it seems that our MPs, her, are allowing our positively deluded Prime Minister to carry on with his mad plans (he had a little rant in which he listed all those things he thought positive about his reign, none of which I felt any attachment too). Those on the benches chosen to speak to the PM are on a pre-prepared list and then there are the ‘bobbers’, those that stand-up between the PM’s responses hoping to catch the Speaker’s eye after the list is completed and there is time to spare. Not one of the picked questions had any reference to the cost of fuel, nothing to do with planning or road maintenance. I can only assume that the back benchers have been cowed or are looking for preferment. This and other matters I pointed out to my MP. She is elected as a representative of her electorate, who also just happens to be inside the governing Party. She has no sway with local government and does not visibly represent her constituency in Parliament, so what is her purpose? Whitehall deals directly with councils and the chances are that everything is on the level of national roll-out, a one size fits all bureaucratic exercise. No wonder so many blunders are being made. Local councils, also elected, have been turned into government agencies, so what is the purpose of voting for them (just so that they can call themselves dignitaries and spend hard earned money on frippery, where they have any latitude, and on maintaining the rubber stamp, where they don’t?).
“Recent volatile international gas prices have demonstrated that we need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. We need to protect consumers and businesses from global gas prices by increasing our domestic energy security through clean power that is generated in the UK for the people of the UK.”
For decades we haven’t had volatile gas prices. So the connection is with what we have done recently, not fossil fuels. In any case, Volatility isn’t a problem – we can hedge that at far lower cost than replacing gas. Locking us into permanently high energy prices will reduce volatility but leave us with permanently high prices. That replaces a temporary problem we can cope with a permanent one we cannot.
UK ceding energy independence is a disastrous and some might say criminal act of recklessness. How can a country that’s just released itself from the EU’s clutches deliberately choose to become reliant on outside suppliers?
Energy security is national security, and we’re throwing it away on a whim. It’s the scandal of our lifetime.
Let us be clear, this whole Net Zero edifice is being driven by unelected ‘civil servants’ of one sort or another. The elected politicians have absolutely no say in this momentum of change now under way, nor in the funding of this monstrous dynamic. There have been only several politicians who have recognised the true facts of this from its first utterances in Parliament, and since with no impact or effect. Some others are now beginning to realise the implications, but their voices are muted. I now cannot see any politician who will be brave enough to directly challenge all this, but even if so the unelected machine will neuter (castrate) them.
When I received the email from them, I was hard pushed to know what was the most preposterous part. I was drawn to their claim that ‘ In the same survey, after being provided with information on net zero, 78% of all participants said they strongly or somewhat supported the net zero target.’ It reminded me of Sir Humphrey’s views on surveys. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA
Back then we were living in a better place, when such programmes could be seen as humorous. Not any more sadly
I am very suspicious of China and its CCP.
‘Coronavirus’ and ‘Climate Change’ I believe are both Chinese constructs intended to disadvantage the West, and facilitate the re-distribution of our manufacturing to China. This will very simply enable it to achieve economic world domination at our expense.
Endowed with coal, gas and oil reserves in abundance; we in the UK denying ourselves our birthright, and by so doing the inevitable result will lead to severe recession, yet still without any remote possibility of stopping Global Warming?
By contrast, China by its very actions, is obviously disbelieving the Climate Change Propaganda, and is forging onwards imagining a prosperous future powered by the cheapest & reliable energy possible which the unbelievably naive Western World has decided to reject. If we only emulated them, our threat of inflation, of rising interest rates, fuel poverty and our manufacturing recession would vanish like snow off a dyke.
Since China, is obviously pushing the Western world’s heavily propagandised Climate Change mantra, while commandeering all rare world-wide metal sources expecting that we will be forced to buy our electric cars and other items from them, Should we not play them at their own game? Should we not wake-up to OUR OWN interests by going back to cheap Coal and Gas energy? Should we not indeed ditch Climate Change and the self harm of inflation and energy poverty its expensive energy imposes on us? China’s monopoly of rare earth materials purchased at huge cost to itself would then be renamed as ‘Stranded Assets’. The West would turn the economic tables on what amounts to our seemingly often unrealised enemy. This turnaround would also have no detrimental effect on the alleged CO2 Global Warming as the overall carbon footprint from goods manufactured world-wide would remain essentially unaltered.
At the moment, our entire political class are behaving like China’s “Useful Idiots”.
A perfect summary of the situation. Thank you.
add to that that we have allowed A state controlled Chinese company to buy Cuadrilla Resources and the richest shale gas deposit ever foundf.
Our ‘useful idiots’ are also diving headlong into EVs, for which China controls 50% (or more) of the world’s lithium supplies for their batteries. What could go wrong?